The Writings of Swedenborg
(1688-1771) have elicited a variety of reactions over the centuries, including those
who have made them a basis of a new Christian revelation to those who have considered them
the grandiose output a mere madman and mystic.
Recently, Talbot (1997) revisits the long literary history of
Swedenborg's alleged insanity, a charge which understandably has offended many of the New Church intellectuals. The logic and arguments of the
Swedenborgian supporters (see Larsen, 1988; Williams-Hogan, 1988)
appears far superior, more detailed, and weightier than the meager, insufficient, and
contentious speculations of the Swedenborg detractors.

The latest of these insanity charges, which Talbot fully
and definitively demonstrates to be unfounded and untenable, is a brief note by John Johnson in the British Journal of Psychiatry (1994)
in which he concludes on the basis of psychohistorical methods
("psychopathography") that Swedenborg's spiritual experiences were
"hallucinations" of "acute schizophrenia or epileptic psychosis."
Similar charges by other psychiatrists are referred to (e.g., Maudsley) held together by
the unifying idea that Swedenborg had "the conviction that he was the Messiah and the
Second Advent of the Lord Jesus Christ." As Talbot points out, this charge is clearly
inaccurate to anyone who reads Swedenborg's writings.
Swedenborg never claimed to be the Messiah but rather to worship the Messiah as God-Man
and to announce to the world the good news of the Messiah's Second Advent for which he was
a witness and revelator in response to a special and unique Divine calling. He always insisted that it was not he, Swedenborg, who
was holy or special or infallible, but his given mission, and that people should test the
ideas in his writings by their own common sense and rational thinking. He always insisted
that people should not believe anything except what their common sense and their rational
convince them of being truth. Thus he always presents the ideas in the writings as one
would present scientific or legal issues in a court of law or legislative body, thus, from
a rational perspective with a rational method, and following a rational sequence. The
purpose is always to prove logically and common sensically and by analogy, avoiding blind
acceptance or persuasion as one ought to avoid the plagues.

Perhaps to many psychiatrists it makes no difference
whether Swedenborg thought he was the Messiah or whether he thought he was merely
announcing the Messiah's Second Coming, with himself as the only earthly witness to it. In
both cases modern psychiatry would almost compulsively assign a diagnosis of psychosis.
Strengthening this diagnosis, psychiatrists would point to facts acknowledged and commonly
accepted by Swedenborgians, such as the following:

* Swedenborg kept a diary of his daily conversations with
"spirits" who are inhabitants of the spiritual world after their death in this
world.

* Jesus Christ personally appeared to him in a vision on
more than on one occasion and directly instructed Swedenborg to write about his
experiences with spirits and their relation to the Bible, and to call these writings
Sacred Revelations, the Second Coming of Christ, as a means of effecting a new Christian
dispensation for the entire future to come.

* As part of this New Christian revelation Swedenborg
presents his series of experiences in the spiritual
world including the direct communication with spirits who had been born on
various planets inside and outside the solar system, and even some episodes that involved
actually "seeing through the eyes" of living inhabitants on distant planets,
through the mediation of spirits.

* Also as part of this new revelation, Swedenborg includes
his extensive conversations with "angels" who are the inhabitants of celestial
regions after their departure form the planetary life, and who shared with him their
knowledge and wisdom about human behavior, about life on planets, about human anatomy,
morality, religion, and God.

* Swedenborg reports conversations with historically known
figures such as Moses, David, Mary, Aristotle, Luther, Newton, as well as contemporaries
who had just departed including a Swedish king and other acquaintances and family members.
In these conversations, Swedenborg reveals new facts about these people, not known from
history, such as for instance, Newton's recantation and rejection of his concept of vacuum
(see below), an idea Swedenborg abhors as irrational. Another:
his conversations with Luther (SD 5103) who confesses that
an angel appeared to him at the beginning of his attempts to effect a religious schism in
Catholic Christianity, warning Luther not to continue pushing his idea of "faith alone saves, not works" because it is a false
idea and harmful. But Luther did it anyway because he saw no other way of solidifying the
Protestant schism, and then he confessed his regretfulness to Swedenborg.

* Swedenborg's description of the afterlife, or "the spiritual world," is universalized in
absolute terms. He offered his extensive writings of more than two dozen volumes,
self-published in Neo-Latin at his own expense, as the very Word of God, both equal to the
Bible, describing himself and his work as "the greatest miracle ever granted by the
Lord" in the history of humankind.

* cosmology or the origin of the universe through the
"two suns" and their intervening atmospheres, and the methods of its current
maintenance by the Laws of Divine Providence and
Permissions--see (DLW and DP);
Also: the character of evolution of civilizations on planets, such as the fact that our
planet is the only one among numerous other inhabited planets that have a mechanized or
industrialized society;

* medical science including the characteristic functions
and origins of some viruses not yet identified in his lifetime (SD; see Blom-Dahl, 1996);
Also:

* the nature of psycho-somatic operations, such as the
observation that "anxieties about the future affect the stomach more than the rest of
the viscera" (AC 5178);

* anthropology and archeology, including many unknown facts
about ancient peoples, sacred scriptures, culture, religion, lifespan, death rituals,
symbols, hieroglyphics, science of correspondences,
the nature of unconscious motivation in human affairs, and still others--see (AC throughout);

* psychology and
neurophysiology, especially the detailed working of the mind/body interaction,
including the unobservable elements and components of brain cells, their respiration, and
their initiation of activity through the will and the understanding. Also, the relation
between the cerebellum and the affective domain, on the one hand, and on the other, the
relation between the cerebral cortex and the cognitive domain. Also included, are many
psychological revelations about relationships, marriage, and life's developmental phases,
including language, thought, memory, and reasoning--see (DLW; CL ; TCR);

* physics and chemistry, such as the impossibility of a
vacuum (see below), or the description of the inner structure of
objects in terms of three degrees of discontinuity analogous to the universal law that
applies without exception to every single phenomenon, object, process, or functional
quality:

* I) its essence, origin, source, purpose, or first end

* II) its form, cause, structure, or composition

* III) its effect, resultant, outcome, or usability

CL 329. After the Chief
Teacher and the rest had left me, some boys who also had been in the gymnastic sport
followed me home and there, for a time, stood by me while I was writing. And lo, they saw
a cockroach running over my paper and asked in surprise, "What is that little
creature which runs so fast?" I said, "It is called a cockroach, and I will tell
you marvels about it." I then said: "In that living creature, small as it is,
there are as many members and viscera as in a camel. It has brains, hearts, pulmonary
tubes, organs of sense, of motion, and of generation, a stomach, intestines, and many
other things; and each of them is a contexture of fiber, nerves, blood-vessels, muscles,
tendons, membranes; and each of these a contexture of things still purer which lie deeply
hidden beyond the reach of any eye."

[2] The boys then said that to them this
little living thing seemed nothing more than a simple substance. To this I said:
"Nevertheless, there are innumerable things within it. I tell you this, that you may
know that it is the same in every object which appears before you as a one, a simple, a
mite. It is the same also in your actions, affections, and thoughts. I can assure you that
every grain of your thought, and every drop of your affection is divisible to infinity,
and that so far as your ideas are divisible you are wise. Know then, that everything
divided is more and more multiple, and not more and more simple; for when divided again
and again, it approaches nearer and nearer to the infinite in which are all things
infinitely. This that I tell you is something new and
never before heard of."

[3] After I had said this, the boys went from me to the Chief Teacher and asked him if,
in the gymnasium, he would at some time propose as a problem something new and unheard of.
He asked, "What?" They said: "That everything divided is more and more
multiple and not more and more simple, because it approaches nearer and nearer to the
Infinite in which are all things infinitely." He promised to propose it, and said:
"I see this because I have perceived that a single natural idea is the containant of
innumerable spiritual ideas; yea, that a single spiritual idea is the containant of
innumerable celestial ideas. Hence the distinction between celestial wisdom, in which are
the angels of the third heaven, and spiritual wisdom in which are the angels of the second
heaven; and also between [the latter and] natural wisdom in which are the angels of the
ultimate heaven and also men."

Every object in the natural world, whether planet or gene,
exists within these three discontinuous but related planes of existence. This is indeed
a major new scientific revelation which could not be
discovered merely through observational data, as was also the case with gravity, quantum,
the speed of light, and hypothetical or posited particles, all of which were arrived at
through calculations and inferences, not direct observation. The new revelation that the
cause of an event in "successive degrees" is still "within"
the effect in "simultaneous degrees" opens a new era in science,
preparing the way for the future dualism. As Swedenborg pointed
out, one of the implications of this shift in paradigm is that most of what scientists
today call cause-effect relations are actually effect-effect correlations.

To give but one illustration: the cause of the car speeding
up is not the greater rate of fuel combustion, these two being merely correlations of
effects; instead, the cause of the car going faster is the driver's intention
of going faster. These three are not in a continuous relation: the driver's intention is
in a different plane of the universe than the mechanically built-in relation between gas
pedal and combustion engine. In the new paradigm of dualist science, these events, which
today are considered separately by physics and psychology, will be integrated into a
dualist theory of events that integrates human intentions or functions with physical
properties of phenomena. Swedenborg's dualist science is anthropomorphic, as indicated by
these additional scientific revelations:

* the shape of the universe is not spherical but humanoid,
as visually witnessed by Swedenborg when, by Divine Providence, he was taken to an outside
position to look at it;

* the universe contains two suns, that in the
spiritual world forming and generating all those in the natural world on a successive
basis; further, after generating them, remaining "within" them on a simultaneous
basis, and directing them from that position continuously, synchronously, and ceaselessly;

* events in the natural universe are totally constricted
within limits imposed by events in the spiritual world, the latter being
"within" the former as cause is "within" effect in simultaneous
degrees of existence;

* randomness (or chance) and evolutionary patterns such as
selection and adaptation, are in reality non-random but totally determined by humanoid
purposes involving love, good, value, wisdom, morality, truth, justice, usefulness, and
their opposites or corruption's. For instance, the variety and evolution of animal forms
parallel and are constrained by the variety and hierarchical structure of human
affections, emotions, and sentiments. Every species and genus, every homological
structure, every biochemical process is constrained by and parallels exactly the taxonomy
of the human mind-- its affections, thoughts, and sensations built up into selves within
cultures through personality and society. Nature is a theater of the spiritual: Swedenborg
gives this principle a scientific basis.

* The inner structure of the Trinity as three aspects of
the one Divine Person known variously as Father, Jehovah, Jesus, Messiah-God;

* The developmental phases of the Divine dispensations over
history, or the history of churches from beginning of time to the unending future;

* The spiritual meaning of the
Bible and the method of correspondences by which this meaning can be extracted, formed
into Doctrine that then serves as the basis of one's regeneration (or preparation for
heavenly life);

* The methods of regeneration
we must follow in order to prepare for heavenly life, how we must live our daily lives in
orderly obedience to God through religion and conscience.
Thus we choose heavenly or hellish life in eternity by our cumulative choices which form
our permanent inner character as a spirit.

It is obvious from this brief listing that
Swedenborg represents a unique case in the history of writers and that no one has ever
come forth to claim what he has claimed and achieved as a scientist and revelator. These
amazing claims and treatises would have been totally ignored by Europe's 18th and 19th
century intelligentsia had they not had solid, incontrovertible internal merit. Here is a
partial list of European and American writers who have publicly acknowledged their
admiration of Swedenborg's writings not as a madman's psychosis, but as intellectually
valuable, convincing, and unique:

Not all of these contacts with Swedenborgian
thinking were entirely positive (Brock et. al., 1988). Although
William James edited his father's papers on Swedenborg for posthumous publication, there
occur only two or three passing reference to Swedenborgianism in William James' own works
(Taylor, 1997). Contemporary study of Swedenborg's thought is
carried out by a small active following that, generation after generation, continues to
publish his works and produce updated translations and
collateral interpretations; see also Brock et. al., 1988. As
Jane Williams-Hogan points out, Swedenborg did not have a
personal following like all the other "mystics" who founded a new religious
group in the past two centuries. His Writings constitute a written revelation and
are characterized by the intellectual requirements of such a cultural-religious instrument
which she calls "a new form of charisma with its own structure or order and its own
pattern of development":

Charisma must meet us where we are and speak to who we are.
In traditional societies, charisma is located in shamans and prophets; in modern
societies, I theorize that it appears in text. What to us is extraordinary can be
appreciated and responded to when presented in the rational form of the charismatic book.

Rational and critical people must be addressed in rational
and critical forms. They need to explore in freedom. That critical intellectual freedom
into which we are socialized in this age is most satisfactorily engaged when privately
reading text (Jane Williams-Hogan , p.2).

Contemporary encyclopedias generally carry entries on
Swedenborg and universally acknowledge his broad intellectual influence. An authoritative
catalogue of Swedenborg's writings lists over 200 titles (Tafel,
1875) and the current complete set of Swedenborg's works in English contains 57
volumes (Swedenborg Foundation). Most public and academic
libraries in the U.S. appear to have one or more books by Swedenborg. In a well known
biography of Swedenborg and his writings, Trobridge ends his discussion on "spiritual
philosophy" with this conclusion:

The principles that Swedenborg has elucidated have a very
wide bearing; they are applicable, indeed, to all the great subjects that have exercised
the human mind from time immemorial. A new light is thrown upon all of these problems and
a new order is brought into the region of philosophic inquiry. (Trobridge,
1976, 134 ).

The entry on Swedenborg in The New Encyclopedia Britannica
(1993) describes him as a "Swedish scientist, Christian mystic, philosopher, and
theologian who wrote voluminously in interpreting the Scriptures as the immediate word of
God." Swedenborg is described as a precursor of key modern concepts involving the
structure of the atom, the formation of planets, the nebular theory, and the localization
of mental processes in the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (1967) describes Swedenborg as a "scientist, Biblical scholar, and
mystic" and ties him to rationalists like Descartes, Leibniz, Christian Wolff,
Malebranche, and empiricists like Locke. In the classical vein, Swedenborg is dubbed both
Aristotelian and Neoplatonic. There is no entry for Swedenborg in the International
Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (1968) and in the Encyclopedia Judaica (1973).

The Encyclopedia of Religion (1987) qualifies Swedenborg as
"Swedish scientist and mystic" who "reported on what he had heard and seen
in his supernatural experiences." It mentions Swedenborg's doctrine of
correspondences which was referred to as "a vision of the truth hidden by the
confusion of sense data and everyday language" by "many of the greatest poets of
Western literature, particularly in the Romantic and Symbolic traditions." The most
extensive entry on Swedenborg was found in The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious
Knowledge (1957). This comprehensive article covers Swedenborg's call to his mission as
revelator, his subsequent intromission into the spiritual world while continuing his
professional duties as a government mining engineer and legislator, as well as Kant's
concealment of his indebtedness to Swedenborg's ideas. The article also discusses the
sequence and content of Swedenborg's major works. In contrast to this sympathetic
coverage, the New Catholic Encyclopedia (1967) ends its brief article on Swedenborg with
the suggestion that "his visions were manifestations of a mental disease (paranoia),
subconsciously developed to confirm the theories that he had already worked out."
Still, there is the recognition that "his influence, however, has been considerable,
affecting particularly the philosophy and literature of the Romanticists, and the
development of the psychical sciences." An extensive bibliography of Swedenborg's
writings will be found in Brock et.al., 1988.

The great paradox of Swedenborg is that his writings have
had such an enduring and deep influence on American and Western thought, and yet he is not
directly cited in the professional literature of science, theology, philosophy, and
psychology (Taylor, 1997), despite the fact that well-known
mainstream psychologists like William James (through his father, Henry James, Sr.), Gordon
Allport, and Henry Murray, were deeply involved with Swedenborg according to Taylor. There
undoubtedly exists a reluctance on the part of writers to cite Swedenborg openly. Kirven
(1988) and Zwink (1988) have examined the reasons why Kant, Goethe, Schelling, and writers
in the 19th century German Southwest, have avoided direct citations to Swedenborg in their
published works, though they have acknowledged his influence in indirect allusions and in
private letters or comments to friends.

Famed Zen master Daisetz Suzuki
(1996), who translated some of Swedenborg's books into Japanese, attributes
Swedenborg's obscurity to the fact that he provides too many details about what he has
'seen and heard' in heaven and hell (cited in Nagashima, 1993). He felt that Swedenborg's
theology would be more acceptable to the intelligentsia if he had provided fewer details
about life in the afterlife. Famed transcendentalist and theologian Emerson, chose
Swedenborg as one of his Representative Men in science and history and was deeply
influenced by the description of correspondences between natural phenomena in the physical
environment and spiritual phenomena in the mind. Despite this Emerson could not get past
the simplistic narrative descriptions Swedenborg had of his heavenly travels and
conversations with angels. To Emerson's desire for more sophisticated conceptions of the
spiritual, Swedenborg's childlike quality of angels' wisdom and conceptions was ultimately
unbelievable.

Contemporary scientists understandably hesitate to refer to
a writer who makes claims such as this, about the origin of his knowledge:

I sacredly attest that I have been
intromitted into the Kingdom of God by Messiah Himself, Jesus of Nazareth, and have there
spoken with heavenly Genii, with Spirits, with the dead who have risen again, yea with
those who called themselves Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Esau, Rebecca, Moses, Aaron, and the
Apostles, especially Paul and James; and this now through a period of eight months... (Adversaria 475, cited by Potts, Vol. VI, p. 114).

Years later, towards the end of his long career, Swedenborg
states that his intromission into dual life is the greatest miracle in human history and
has not been granted by God to anyone before. The Lord's purpose for this new revelation
is to bring on His long promised Second Advent, a process which is to be accomplished
through and in the writings of Swedenborg, the appointed revelator. He writes:

As it has been granted me by the Lord to be in the
Spiritual World and in the natural world at the same time, and therefore to speak with
Angels as with men...for I have spoken with all my relations and friends, and likewise
with kings and dukes, as also with learned men, who have met their fate; and this now
continually for twenty-seven years, I am able to describe from living experience the
states of men after death..." (TCR, 281)

Talbot (1995) starts with the question of how
one knows whether someone is telling the truth or not. Specifically, How do you know that
this man Swedenborg was sane or truthful. So he masterfully elaborates the various logical
steps we must consider, or conditions that must be met in order for a reasonable person to
conclude that Swedenborg was sane and truthful. This argument had to be made, of course,
in order to counteract the psychiatric diagnosis of Swedenborg as just another case of a
man who has become insane, psychotic, delusional, or epileptic.

The most recent article, written by John
Johnson and published in the British Journal of Psychiatry (1994) is barely 2 pages
long and presents no believable evidence other than repeating some undocumented and highly
disputed hearsay claims made by one of Swedenborg's landlords in London where he was
lodging for awhile. The article makes no reference to Swedenborg's contributions and
achievements throughout his life and does not refer to any of the biographies of
Swedenborg that discuss and refute the delusion diagnosis. No one who knows anything about
Swedenborg would give any serious attention to this type of historical psychiatric hype.
Yet its publication in a respectable professional journal is of some significance and
needs to be evaluated.

This type of global attack on Swedenborg's through the
insanity charge has had a long history in Swedenborgian literature, as ably documented in Talbot's rebuttal of Johnson's gratuitous claims. So rather than
ask, as Talbot already has, How do you know that this man Swedenborg was sane or
truthful?, let me formulate another question, namely, When do people ask how you know that
this man Swedenborg was sane or truthful? I will take up two conditions or motives that
bring people to ask this question. I encountered these motives in my own history of
becoming a Swedenborgian scientist in middle age, when my academic and scientific career
as a psychologist and social scientist was at its peak.

At age 43 I had been a full professor for a decade and had
garnered a long list of publications and government
research grants in my specialty field of psycholinguistics and cognitive science. That
year in 1981 I was browsing one day in our University of Hawaii library in the BS and BX
category looking for a Bible commentary we could take home (I was with my wife). At one
point we saw several shelves of books in one edition, all authored by Emanuel Swedenborg.
I recognized the name from a comment I had read in one of Rudolf
Steiner's magazine articles. All I could remember was that Steiner called Swedenborg a
mad genius and I had made a mental note to look him up some day. I had not expected his
books to be in the Bible exegesis category, but I was delighted at the double opportunity
and took home my first Swedenborg volume of what later I came to know fondly as "the
Writings."

My wife and I spent hours every evening
reading volume after volume in this astonishing series of revelations. Our perspective on
everything was fundamentally changed-- on religion, on science, on nature, on life, on
death. It was during this time that I ran into the two types of situations in which I was
asked by someone How do I know that Swedenborg is sane and truthful? I thus became
empirically aware of two types of resistances to the revelations in the Writings of
Swedenborg: first, from family and friends; second, from scientists and theologians. The
first type of resistance may be called informal or commonsensical; the second type, formal
or doctrinal.

Common sense dictates that we be wary of grandiose and
delusional claims other people may make. It is useful to adopt a "negative bias"
as reflected in, "Why should I believe these fantastic claims?" Note however
that this is in the form of a question, thus indicating one is willing to at least listen
to the argument and evidence if any. The informal, common sense stance is less rigid than
the formal, doctrinal stance, which operates by excluding in advance anything that is not
already in agreement with the primary assumptions and proposals.

Commonsensical and doctrinal resistance to Swedenborg are
purely external to the Writings. From this external perspective people may see my
involvement with Swedenborg as gullibility or intellectual affectation for the occult or
unusual. However these attitudes and judgments reflect on the people who have them, and leave untouched any
examination of the merit of Swedenborg's proposals and revelations. It is important to see
that Swedenborg cannot be treated as an ordinary case. Swedenborgians do not ordinarily
question the standard basis of psychiatric medicine and diagnosis. Thus, if an adolescent
in a Swedenborgian family in say Bryn Athyn, PA, a suburb of Philadelphia where thousands
of such families live today, should suddenly start claiming that he talks to spirits and
travels to heaven and hell on a recurrent basis, and speaks to spirits from other planets,
the Swedenborgian parents would surely take the adolescent to a psychiatrist and may admit
the diagnosis of mental illness.

Looking at Swedenborg as an ordinary case history almost
certainly forces a psychiatrist to a diagnosis of mania or psychosis of some sort. It's
only when we remove Swedenborg from the ordinary case scenario, and categorize him as
historically unique and special, that the psychiatric diagnosis can be lifted as
inappropriate or inapplicable. This cannot be done from an external perspective because
psychiatrists would have no warrant or opportunity to lift the applicability of the
standard diagnosis. But from an inner perspective, which critically and analytically
examines the writings as a scientific proposal, it is possible to confirm that Swedenborg
is a unique case requiring a paradigm shift.

The process will soon begin whereby scientists will be
examining Swedenborg's writings as scientific proposals, and from this inner perspective,
a judgment will arise which I predict will be positive and will fundamentally alter
science and its theory and method. As a scientist and behaviorist within scientific
psychology, I have made such an examination of Swedenborg's writings and have seen their
fundamental merit. It has influenced my subsequent scientific research and theory, and has
led me to attempt some of the conceptual translation process that is required to bridge
the gap between the 18th century and the 21st.

Contemporary scientists are by training
oriented to empiricism, that is, to a mutual agreement that hypotheses, theories, and
explanations are to be confirmed by data obtained through an approved scientific
methodology. Scientific disciplines differ in detail regarding what is considered
"approved" methodologies. However, there are general, cross-disciplinary
agreements which is based in the logic of experimentalism and research design. These
principles are transmitted formally to new scientists, so that graduate students in any
discipline that wants to be recognized as scientific, cannot obtain their Ph.D. degree
without proving their understanding of these principles in required examinations and in
the doing of research that conforms to these principles.

What today's scientists acquire by routine training,
eighteenth century contemporaries of Swedenborg had to acquire by intellectual genius and
leadership. It was the genius of Descartes, Leibniz, Wolff, Hume, Locke, Swedenborg,
Newton, and Kant, among the well known early figures, who engineered the basis of our
modern scientific intellectual structure upon which we have relied to build a rapidly
evolving modern society. Swedenborg was obsessively concerned with rationality and
empiricism. This is evident in both his Philosophical Works and his Theological Writings.
He was extremely careful to use only rational appeals and he insisted that all rational
accounts can and should be confirmed with empirical facts or observations.

In many instances he describes experimental manipulations
of conditions to produce a predicted effect, emphasizing that without these factual,
sensual, empirical observations or confirmations, the human mind does not give interior
assent to anything. In other words, the modern mind can only accept an account of God that
is rational and can be empirically confirmed. This idea is known in New Church circles as
"Nunc Licet," which is Latin for "Now it is permitted" and represents
an inscription Swedenborg saw in the spiritual world on a temple gate that contained the
Word of the Second Coming (see TCR 508).

Here are a few passages that show Swedenborg's orientation
toward empirical confirmations. The relevant specific phrase is bolded.

A certain person was let into that dark
cloud where the infernals are, IN ORDER THAT HE MIGHT KNOW how the case is with those who
are there; he being protected by the Lord by means of angels. Speaking from thence with me
he said that there was there so great a rage of insanity against good and truth, and
especially against the Lord, that be was amazed that it could possibly be resisted; for
the Infernals breathed nothing but hatred, revenge, and slaughter, with such violence that
they desired to destroy all in the universe; so that unless this rage was continually
repelled by the Lord, the whole human race would perish. (AC 3340)

It has been given me to know FROM MUCH EXPERIENCE that in
the natural world and its three kingdoms there is nothing whatever that does not represent
something in the spiritual world, or that has not something there to which it corresponds.
Besides many other experiences, THIS WAS MADE EVIDENT also from the following. On several
occasions when I was speaking of the viscera of the body, and was tracing their connection
from those which are of the head to those which are of the chest, and so on to those which
are of the abdomen, the angels that were above me led my thoughts through the spiritual
things to which those viscera correspond, and this SO THAT THERE WAS NOT THE LEAST ERROR.
They thought not at all of the viscera of the body of which I was thinking, but only of
the spiritual things to which these correspond. Such is the intelligence of angels that
from spiritual things they know all things in the body in general and particular, even the
most secret things, such as can never come to man's knowledge; nay, they know everything
there is in the universal world, without a mistake; and this because from spiritual things
are the causes, and the beginnings of causes. (AC 2992)

That the Word in the letter stores up such things within
it, is often presented to the sight of the spirits or souls who come into the other life;
and it has sometimes been granted me to be present when this was done, as may be seen from
the experiences adduced in the first part of this work concerning the Holy Scripture or
Word, as containing things Divine which are manifest to good spirits and angels (n. 1767-
1776, and 1869-1879); from which experiences I may for the sake of confirmation again
relate what now follows. (AC 3473)

Nevertheless all these means have been disclosed in the
internal sense of the Word, and ARE MANIFEST BEFORE THOSE WHO are in that sense, thus
before the angels, who SEE AND PERCEIVE innumerable things on this subject, of which
scarcely one can be unfolded and explained in a manner suited to the apprehension of man.
[3] But FROM EFFECTS AND THE SIGNS THEREOF IT IS IN SOME MEASURE MANIFEST TO MAN HOW THE
CASE IS WITH this conjunction for the rational mind (that is, man's interior will and
understanding) ought to represent itself in the natural mind just as this mind represents
itself in the face and its expressions, insomuch that as the face is the countenance of
the natural man, so the natural mind should be the countenance of the rational mind. (AC
3573)

It was also once SHOWN ME TO THE LIFE what societies they
are, and of what quality, and how they flow in and act, which constitute the province of
the face, and flow into the muscles of the forehead, of the cheeks, of the chin, and of
the neck, and what communication there is between them. IN ORDER THAT THIS MIGHT BE
PRESENTED TO LIFE, it was allowed them by means of influx and in various ways to present
the appearance of a face. IN LIKE MANNER IT WAS SHOWN what societies, and of what quality,
flow into the lips, into the tongue, into the eyes, and into the ears and IT WAS ALSO
GIVEN TO SPEAK WITH THEM, and thus to be fully instructed. IN THIS WAY IT WAS MADE EVIDENT
that all who come into heaven are organs or members of the Grand Man; and also that heaven
is never shut, but that the greater its numbers the stronger is the endeavor, the stronger
the force, and the stronger the action; and further, that the heaven of the Lord is
immeasurable, so immeasurable as to exceed all belief; the inhabitants of this earth being
very few in comparison, and almost as a pool compared with the ocean. (AC 3631)

3216. IN ORDER THAT IT MAY BE STILL BETTER KNOWN HOW THE
CASE IS WITH representatives in the other life, that is, with those things which appear in
the world of spirits, take some further examples. When the angels are speaking about the
doctrinal things of charity and faith, then sometimes in a lower sphere, where there is a
corresponding society of spirits, THERE APPEARS THE FORM OR PATTERN of a city or cities,
with palaces therein exhibiting such skill in architecture as is amazing, so that you
would say that the very art itself was there in its native home; not to mention houses of
varied aspect; and wonderful to say in all these objects both in general and in particular
there is not the smallest point, or visible atom, that does not represent something of the
angelic idea and speech: SO THAT IT IS EVIDENT what innumerable things are contained in
these; and also what is signified by the cities seen by the prophets in the Word; and
likewise what by the holy city or New Jerusalem; and what by the cities in the prophetic
Word; namely, the doctrinal things of charity and faith (n. 402, 2449). (AC 3216)

But I know that these are arcana too deep to fall within
apprehension; and this as before said for the reason that they are things unknown; but as
the internal sense describes them, and this as to all their circumstances, they must needs
be set forth, no matter how much they may appear to be above the apprehension. At the very
least IT MAY IN THIS WAY BE SEEN what great arcana there are in the internal sense of the
Word; also that the arcana are such as scarcely to be seen in the light of the world, in
which man is during his life in the body, but that THEY ALWAYS APPEAR MORE DISTINCTLY AND
CLEARLY in proportion as man comes from the light of the world into the light of heaven,
into which he comes after death; thus into the light in which blessed and happy souls are,
that is, the angels. (AC 3086)

WHO COULD KNOW, except from an interior searching of the
Word, and at the same time from revelation, that these words, "Laban ran out of doors
unto the man, unto the fountain," signify the desire of the affection of good toward
the truth that was to be initiated into truth Divine? And yet THIS IS WHAT THE ANGELS
PERCEIVE when these words are read by man; for such are the correspondences between a
man's ideas and an angel's that while the man takes these words according to the sense of
the letter, and has the idea of Laban as running out of doors to the man unto the
fountain, the angel perceives the desire of the affection of good toward the truth which
was to be initiated into truth Divine. For the angels have no idea of Laban, nor of
running, nor of a fountain, but they have spiritual ideas corresponding to these. That
THERE IS SUCH A CORRESPONDENCE OF ACTUAL THINGS, and thence of ideas, natural and
spiritual, may be seen from what was said above concerning correspondences (see n. 1563,
1568, 2763, 2987-3003, 3021). (AC 3131)

[2] That there can be no conjunction of falsity with good,
or of truth with evil, but only of falsity with evil, and of truth with good, IT HAS BEEN
GIVEN ME TO PERCEIVE TO THE LIFE; AND I HAVE PERCEIVED THAT the case is as follows: When a
man has the affection of good, that is, when he wills good from the heart, then whenever
anything is to be thought of that is to be willed and done, his good willing flows into
his thinking, and there it applies itself to the knowledges which are there, and joins
itself with them as its recipient vessels, and by this conjunction impels him so to think,
to will, and to act. (AC 3033)

[3] In the other life such persons (however much in this
life they may have seemed to be more highly instructed than others) are more stupid than
others and so far as they are in the persuasion that they are in truth, THEY INDUCE thick
darkness on others. SUCH HAVE AT TIMES BEEN WITH ME; but they were not susceptible of any
affection of good from truth, HOWSOEVER THE TRUTHS WERE RECALLED TO THEIR MIND which they
had known in the life of the body; for evil was with them, with which truths COULD NOT BE
CONJOINED. Neither can such persons be in the company of the good; but if there is
anything of natural good with them, they are vastated even till they know nothing of
truth; and THEN THERE IS INSINUATED into the remaining good something of truth, as much as
the little remaining good can receive. But they who have been in the affection of good
from the heart, ARE ABLE TO RECEIVE all truth in accordance with the amount and the
quality of the good that has been with them. (AC 3033)

To the above I will add two MEMORABLE RELATIONS. First:
After the problem concerning the soul had been discussed and solved in the gymnasium [no.
315], I SAW the audience going out in procession, the Chief Teacher in front, after him
the elders in whose midst were the five young men who had given the answers and then the
rest. Coming out, they withdrew to the sides of the house where were walks bordered by
shrubs. Gathering there, they separated into small groups which were so many companies of
young men conversing together on matters of wisdom. In each group was one of the wise men
from the balcony. SEEING THEM from my lodging, I became IN THE SPIRIT, and GOING TO THEM
in the spirit, approached the Chief Teacher who lately had proposed the question
concerning the soul. When he saw me, he said: "Who are you? WHEN I SAW YOU coming on
the road, it surprised me that you now came into my sight and now passed out of it; that
is, at one moment you were visible to me and suddenly became invisible. You certainly are
not in our state of life.

"To this I answered, smiling, "I am not a player
of tricks, or a Vertumnus, but am by turns, now in your light, now in your shade, and thus
a sojourner and also a native."

At this, the Chief Teacher looked at me and said, "You
speak [2] things strange and wonderful. Tell me who you are." I then said: "I am
in the world called the natural world, in which you were and from which you have departed;
and I am also in the world into which you came and in which you now are, which is called
the spiritual world. Thus it is, that I AM IN A NATURAL STATE AND AT THE SAME TIME IN A
SPIRITUAL, being in a natural state with men on earth, and in a spiritual state with you.
WHEN IN A NATURAL STATE, I AM NOT VISIBLE TO YOU, but when in a spiritual state I am
visible. My being of this nature has been granted me by the Lord. To you, enlightened man,
it is known that a man of the natural world does not see a man of the spiritual world, or
the reverse. Therefore, when I let my spirit down into the body I was not visible to you,
but when I sent it out of the body I was visible. (CL 326)

477. To the above shall be added the following MEMORABLE
RELATION: (...) [3] An angel, looking down from heaven, HEARD THESE WORDS, and in order
that the young man might go no further in profaning marriages, he interrupted him and
said, "Come up hither and I WILL SHOW YOU IN A LIVING WAY what heaven is, and what
hell and the nature of the hell for confirmed whoremongers."

He then showed him the way, and the young man went up.
After being received, he was led first into a paradisal garden where were fruit-trees and
flowers which from their beauty, pleasantness and fragrance filled the animus of all with
the delights of life. Seeing these, he expressed his great admiration; but he was then in
the external sight in which he had been when seeing like things in the world. In this
sight he was rational, but in his internal sight, wherein whoredom played the chief role
and occupied every least thought, he was not rational.

THEREFORE HIS EXTERNAL SIGHT WAS CLOSED and his internal
sight opened. With this opened, he said, "WHAT DO I SEE NOW? is it not straw and
sticks of wood? And what do I smell now? are they not bad smells? Where now are the things
of paradise?" The angel said: "They are near by and at hand, but THEY DO NOT
APPEAR BEFORE YOUR INTERNAL SIGHT which is scortatory, for that sight turns heavenly
things into infernal, seeing only their opposites. Every man has an internal mind and an
external, and so an internal sight and an external. With the evil, the internal mind is
insane, and the external wise, while with the good, the internal is wise and from this the
external also; and in the spiritual world a man sees objects according to the nature of
his mind."

[4] FROM POWER GIVEN HIM, the angel then CLOSED THE YOUNG
MAN'S INTERNAL SIGHT and opened his external. He then led him through the gates towards
the

center of the dwellings. There he saw magnificent palaces of alabaster,
marble, and various precious stones, and beside them porticos, and columns round about,
overlaid and encompassed with stupendous insignia and adornments. On seeing these, he was
amazed and said, "What do I see? I see magnificent things in their true magnificence,
and architecture in its true art."

Thereupon the angel AGAIN CLOSED HIS EXTERNAL SIGHT and
opened his internal sight, which was evil, being filthily scortatory. Wan this was done,
he cried out, saying, "WHAT DO I SEE NOW? Where am I? Where now are the palaces? and
the magnificent things? I see heaps, ruins, and places full of holes!"

After this (...) his internal sight was opened AND THE
EXTERNAL CLOSED AS BEFORE, and being asked what he saw now, he replied, "Nothing but
walls, here of rushes, there of straw, and yonder of fire-brands."

HE WAS THEN BROUGHT ONCE MORE INTO HIS EXTERNAL STATE OF
MIND, [6] and maidens who were beauties, being images of heavenly affection, were brought
to him and addressed him with the sweet voice of their affection. On seeing and hearing
them, his face changed and he returned of himself to his internals which were scortatory;
and because these cannot endure anything of heavenly love and, on the other hand, cannot
be endured by heavenly love, THEY BOTH VANISHED, the maidens from the sight of the man,
and the man from the sight of the maidens.

(...) Know, however, that with every one in this world, his
externals [8] are successively closed and his internals opened. In this way they are
prepared for heaven or for hell. And because the evil of whoredom defiles the internals of
the mind more than any other evil, you must needs be brought down to the filthy things of
your own love, and these are in hells where the caverns stink of excrement. WHO CANNOT
KNOW FROM REASON that in the spiritual world, what is unchaste and lascivious is impure
and unclean, and thus that there is nothing which more pollutes and defiles a man and
induces on him what is infernal. Take care, therefore, that you glory no more in your
whoredom that therein you are a masculine man above others. I PREDICT THAT YOU WILL BECOME
so feeble that you will scarcely know where your masculinity is. Such is the lot that
awaits those who glory in the potency of whoredom."

After hearing this, the young man descended and returned to
the world of spirits and to his former companions. He then spoke with them modestly and
chastely, yet not for long. (CL 477)

Numerous more examples can be found that show Swedenborg's
empirical orientation through and through, his continuous effort in never asking the
reader to believe by auhoritativeness or blind belief from a trusting attitude. He
understood and taught that nothing can be accepted in an interior way but that which is
freely seen as true from one's own perspective, knowledge, and understanding. Hence his
persistent effort in casting EVERY principle or concept into a rational mode that examines
theoretical propositions in the light of empirical confirmations. Any account or
explanation about God's Divine operations on the planet, such as those systematically laid
out in his Work titled Divine Providence (DP), are worthless unless they can be empirically confirmed by the reader. This confirmation process is thus inevitable and at the
center of Swedenborg's description of regeneration and character change. Hence he spends
so much text carefully presenting the scientific facts that knowledgeable persons can
confirm, and thus come to freely accept the rational explanation of spiritual principles
and facts.

The exclusion of Swedenborg from most, if not all,
scientific disciplines is not due to his lack of empiricism. This fact cannot be stressed
too strongly. Swedenborg is excluded by the attitude and commitment to monism
(materialism) and atheism (secular humanism), not lack of empiricism. Such a single-minded
commitment AUTOMATICALLY and without consideration excludes Swedenborg who has made
scientific dualism a central aspect of his orientation. The major empiricists in the
history of modern science, like Hobbes, Descartes, Leibniz, Newton, Darwin, and Einstein,
who acknowledged nature as a work of God, who then removed Himself from the equation,
"Watching us from a distance" as a recent popular song says. But Swedenborg
refused to be a weekday scientist, and felt compelled by sincerity and
consistency, to integrate the weekday science and the Sunday deity. This integration was
achieved by developing the dualist position, which was, that there exist two substances,
one natural, and the other spiritual within the natural, but not in time and space). His
works are about the scientific and empirical details of this proposition.

A recent article titled "Toward a Science of
Experience" by A. Kukla appeared in The Journal of
Mind and Behavior (Spring 1983). It presents a re-evaluation of the legitimacy of
introspective evidence in scientific psychology and concludes that the usual
private/public distinction behaviorists make, is not logically tenable because both types
of data fulfill the requirements of objectivity:

-- terms must refer to events
-- events must be publicly observable
-- explanations must be verifiable by events
-- concepts must apply to a class of observations or properties
-- observations must have inter-subjective agreement when conditions are met
-- experimental manipulation of known conditions must produce predictable results

It is remarkable that all of Swedenborg's writings fully
meet these six requirements for scientific objectivity. The quotations presented just
above in this section clearly show this, especially in the bolded phrases that show his
empiricism. Swedenborg always defined his terms precisely where others started being
vague. Numerous people have written about spirituality, about the afterlife, about heaven
and hell, about the subconscious mind, about sin and regeneration, about life on other
planets, about the past, present and future. Swedenborg is the only one, to our knowledge,
who has combined all these areas, has integrated them into one rational theory or account,
and has presented numerous empirical evidence to confirm them. In Swedenborg's writings we
find a complete exposition of scientific dualism and its empirical methodology.

Swedenborg does not appeal to unique capabilities in
presenting his experiences and observations "when in the spirit." Anyone who is
brought into that mental state can witness what Swedenborg has reported. As shown in the
quotations immediately above, Swedenborg's observations were social in nature, always
involving other people. Anyone present could objectively perceive what Swedenborg observed
and reported. His witnessings, or testimony, are in that sense public, not private. The
fact that we can't place ourselves into that mental state by our current level of skills,
is a technical problem of methodology, to be solved in the future. In the meantime, his
data stand.

All scientific theories and models of
phenomena must include an account of the dual sun: the Sun of the spiritual world and its
atmospheres and geography, and the sun of the natural world with its atmospheres and land
masses on planets, replicated numberless times in sun-planet locations throughout the
natural world.

The dual sun is replicated in all parts thereof. Thus, any
object produced through the dual sun such as a pebble or protein cell, will replicate
within its structure the vertical degrees of the dual sun. The external structure of the
object will be visible or measurable through tools of the senses, such as an electronic
microscope or an identifiable biochemical reaction, but the internal structure produced by
the spiritual Sun will require spiritual detection devices, which are rational, objective,
and confirmable by others.

The scientific account of phenomena, objects, and
properties include the dual sun when it shows how cause- effect relations are actually
relations between the object's inner and outer structure, replicating the original
cause-effect relation between the Sun of the spiritual world and the sun of the natural
planetary system. The former produces the latter and is contained within it synchronously.
Sequential cause-effect in production or etiology is replicated in synchronous action
between the vertical degrees.

The dual sun creates its own atmospheres and geography
which Swedenborg describes in minute detail. These descriptions must be accepted as
scientific revelations, that is, facts about reality that were unknown in science, and
serve to assist us in building a rational civilization that is in harmony with spiritual
reality, thus serving to improve the orderly evolution of society and mind.

The cause, which precedes the effect,
continues its presence in the effect by remaining within its interior and acting
synchronously. Remove the cause within the synchronous effect, and the effect ceases to
exist. Every natural phenomenon that physics and biology has seen so far can now be looked
at again in this new paradigm. For instance: what is the cause of your car accelerating
when the light turns green? It is common to give a mechanical account as the cause in
terms of sequences involving gas pedal, fuel, combustion engine, axle, wheel, and tire
friction. In the new dual paradigm, these sequences would be correlated effects, while
their cause lies in their interior structure determined by the spiritual Sun, in this
case, your intention as a driver to speed up. This human motive is the cause of the
acceleration and the acceleration continues to exist until this spiritual cause is removed
from its interior.

Similar, but more complex dual accounts will no doubt be
constructed for say, the action of hostile bacteria on the spine in meningitis, or a
catastrophic earthquake, or the diffusion properties of light. Many such dual scientific
accounts are found in Swedenborg throughout his voluminous writings, both theological and
pre-theological. The relationship between inner and outer in vertical degrees is called
"correspondence." When we consider the production phase of any object or process
the cause precedes the effect in time, thus the functional relation is asynchronous. But
when the production phase is completed, and the effect is fully in existence or operation,
then the prior cause enters and remains within the inner structure of the effect. Thus,
cause and effect operate synchronously. As soon as the correspondential coupling is
interrupted, the effect ceases to exist.

For instance, the body is alive with integrated biological
operations as long as these natural effects retain a functional connection with the soul,
the spiritual organ responsible for maintaining and directing cell action. When the
physical organs and processes no longer respond to their inner cause due to illness or
mechanical injury, the soul together with the mind, also called the spirit, separates from
its relation to the body. At this point the natural body becomes a mere corpse, quickly
losing its human form and returning to its mineral form, while the spirit now assumes its
role as the external body within which is contained the mind or will and understanding.
This is called the afterlife in the spiritual world, or life in eternity.

Swedenborg has described this life with many details that
inform us on their geography, government, daily activities, philosophy, and knowledges. It
is a dramatic social-psychological life in which people's inmost degree, the plane of
their feelings and intentions, produce as cause, the outward effects in the ecology of the
spirit such as location or co-presence with others and quality of the appearing surround
such as weather, vegetation, animal life, mood, and artistic style of visible objects.

Newton passed into the spiritual world in 1727
before Swedenborg's sojourn and stay in London. Later however, the two men met in the
spiritual world: "I spoke with Newton concerning a vacuum, and concerning
colors." (LJ 265), and he goes on regarding Newton's
changed view on the concept of vacuum:

When he had heard these things, Newton said that before
this he had desisted from that idea, and he would desist from it hereafter; knowing that
he is now in the spiritual world, in which, nevertheless, according to his former idea,
would have been his vacuum; and that even now he is a man, and therein he thinks, feels,
acts, yea breathes, and this could not take place in a vacuum which is nothing, but in
something which is, and from Esse exists and subsists, and that an interstitial nothing is
impossible, because that would be destructive of something, that is of essences and
substances which are something. For something and nothing are altogether opposites, even
so that he was horrified at the idea of nothing, and would beware of it, lest his mind
fall into a swoon. (LJ 266)

Newton in the spiritual world has a new concept of
color, as described by Swedenborg:

Concerning colors he said that in the
world he had believed that they originated from the substances, as it were, of different
colored materials continually flowing forth from the solar ocean, and adding themselves
continually to like things in objects in the world, likewise when they pass through
pellucid objects following then the ways of light, according to its diffractions and
refractions, and proceeding as like to like, thus red to red, blue to blue, yellow to
yellow, and so on, as in prisms, crystalline globes, and vapors whence come rainbows.

But the angels did not acknowledge this cause of colors,
saying that there are colors in the spiritual world as well as in the natural world; and
in the spiritual world they are vivid, splendid, and variegated more than in the natural
world, and that they know that they are variegations of their light corresponding to their
love or good, and to their wisdom or truth, and that the sun from which their light
proceeds, is the Lord Himself, whose Divine love presents around Him the appearance of a
sun, and the Divine wisdom therefrom the appearance of light, and that from that sun,
which as was said, is pure love, no such substances or matters flow forth, but that pure
light presents to view variegations of colors in objects according to the reception of
wisdom by the angels the color red according as their wisdom is derived from good, and the
color bright white according as their wisdom is derived from truth, and the rest as they
partake of the defect and absence of them, which there correspond to shade in the world.

Moreover the angels, by their spiritual ideas, by which
they are able to present and bring forth the causes of things to the life and to full
consent, demonstrated that colors are nothing else than variegations of flamy light and
bright white light, in objects according to their forms; and that colors are not
materials, so neither is light, because they correspond to the love and wisdom of the
angels, from whom they proceed by Divine operation; and their love and wisdom are not
material but spiritual. Neither are heat and light in the world material, but natural, and
they inflow into matters, and they modify themselves in them according to the arms of the
parts. Therefore neither are colors material, as they would be if they existed from
different colored atoms. At length from some indignation they said, "Who cannot see a
paradox in the Newtonian cause, yea what is absurd?" And they departed, saying they
would return if he would discern spiritually or even naturally concerning colors, and not
so materially and sensually.

Then some spirits approached, and said to him [Newton],
"We entreat you to think of colors not as originating from some small prism or from
some wall, but from the green color of all the woods and grassy fields of the whole world
in which you were; can you conceive of a continuous efflux from the sun of a green color
alone, and at the same time an influx, and a continual restoration, likewise of a
continual influx of gray or stone color into the mountains of the whole earth, and so on?
Can you then conceive of a continuous ocean of green alone, and of rock color alone? Tell
us where they go, where they subsist, do they proceed into the universe? Or do they fall
downwards somewhere, or ascend upwards? From these things perchance new earths exist, for
they must be in great abundance because they are material." After he thought of this
thing more deeply, he said, "Now I know that colors are modifications of light in
objects, in the forms of which they make general planes, upon which the light is
variegated according to the forms of the parts, whence are colors." These are the
words of Newton himself, which he wishes me to communicate. (LJ 267) And in another place
he adds: Respecting the planes of colors, he [Newton] spoke in this fashion: that there
were three: white from light, red from fire, and black from shade; and that all the
varieties of colors arise therefrom (SD 6064).

These accounts, and many others like it on the
subject of influx, reveal that light and its phenomena of colors visible in the natural
world are not material substances but spiritual. In other words, visible or measurable
aspects of light such as quanta, wavelength, and speed, are natural effects produced by
spiritual influx. Newton's self-conscious presence in the afterlife forces him to modify
his scientific paradigm that is based on vacuum, light, and motion as material forces and
substances. By acknowledging the dual sun, the continuity of cause effect as vertical
degrees, and the operation of influx, Newton shows the way our modern science can forge
the new dualism.

Before my mind was opened, so that I
could speak with spirits, and so be persuaded by living experience; for many years
previous, such proofs existed with me, that I am now astonished, that yet I did not come
into persuasion concerning the Lord's government, through spirits. Not only were there
dreams, for several years, informing me concerning those things which were written, but
there were, also, changes of state, when I wrote; a certain extraordinary light in those
things which were written. Afterwards, also, many visions, when my eyes were closed, and
light miraculously given; and spirits sensibly (flowed). It was as manifest to perception
(sensum) as the corporeal senses. Many times (occurred infestations through various modes,
by evil spirits, in temptations. Then, afterwards, when those things were written to which
evil spirits were averse, so that I was so obsessed as nearly to be overcome with horror
(ita ut poene obsiderer ad horrorem). Fiery lights were seen. Speech (loqueloe) in
morning-time (was heard), besides many other things; until a certain spirit addressed me
in a few words. I was greatly astonished that he should perceive my thoughts, and
afterwards wondered greatly when (my mind) was opened so that I could converse with
spirits; in like manner the spirit (was then surprised) that I should be astonished. From
these things it may be concluded with what difficulty man can be led to believe that he is
ruled by the Lord through spirits, and with what difficulty he recedes from the opinion
that he lives his own life from himself, apart from spirits-1748, August 27." (SD 2951).

In terms of psychological impact, this scientific
revelation is the most dramatic and may have extraordinary influence on our civilization
and self-conception as a human race. "Horizontal" community can be used to
discuss ethnic and cross-cultural differences and similarities as we first study them in
history, geography, government, social sciences and the humanities. But
"vertical" community is a reference to influx by correspondence of what people
in the spiritual world feel and think into what people on earth feel and think. This kind
of influx has not been described or even suspected in the entire history of science, let
alone described in great detail as it is in Swedenborg.

Our thoughts and feelings vary moment to moment.
Psychology, psychiatry, cognitive science, and neuroscience have all dealt with aspects of
thinking and feeling, but no one has proposed a full and adequate explanation of the
source of this variation. In Swedenborg we now have the revealed details of how and why
thoughts and feelings we have vary and succeed one another in highly constrained ways not
unlike linguistic syntax constrains the form of the sentences we utter (DP 48; 49; 71).

Our thoughts and feelings are constrained and influenced in
two ways: immediate by the Divine and mediate by the Divine through the vertical
community. Divine constraints exercised immediately and directly without intermediaries
are described by Swedenborg under the rubric of the Laws of Divine Providence and the Laws
of Divine Permissions. The Divine "permits" certain departures or modifications
(corruptions; adulteries) but only in so far as good can be brought out of them. The
Divine blocks or inhibits mental departures that are not of spiritual benefit to anyone,
actor or victim. Though we have freedom of choice and freedom of thought, it is not
absolute but constrained within limits that have been revealed.

Divine constraints are also exercised indirectly, through
intermediaries, along a vertical chain of human beings by correspondence across vertical
degrees. The Divine then acts into the highest plane of the mind and those who dwell in
that state called "celestial angels of the third heaven." They become conscious
of the thoughts and feelings whereupon these constrain by correspondence and influx the
thoughts and feelings of the plane immediately below it and those who dwell in that state
called "spiritual angels of the second heaven." The vertical chain of
correspondence thus descends from the Divine through the entire range of the vertical
community from highest heaven to lowest hell.

Our thoughts and feelings while we are in the physical body
from the moment we take our first breath at birth (but not the fetus) to the moment we
breath our last (coma or death) are entirely constrained by our spiritual associations
which we inherit and which we strengthen or weaken by means of the decisions and choices
we make and love. The vertical community implies the existence of a common unlearned
universal thought-language used by the entire race. It also implies that thinking and
feeling are social activities not individual. It's not possible to think on your own. Some
spiritual society must be in contact to provide influx from their mind to ours and without
this influx we cannot think-- we would "swoon" or be like in a coma.

Our thinking and feeling is a group phenomenon, a community
affair. The content between what we think or feel and what the spiritual societies in
contact think and feel, is determined by correspondence. These laws of correspondence,
known to the ancients but later forgotten, have now been revealed again through
Swedenborg. Surprise of surprises: these correspondences are embedded in Sacred Scriptures
and in ordinary language, such as the correspondences between light and truth, emotion or
love and heat, water and truth, poison and sin, and many less known ones such as garden
and intelligence, snake and science, seed and intentions, the number 40 and temptation,
the number 3 and completion, and so on.

Swedenborg was able to instruct himself empirically as to
these correspondences. His revelations are not by poetic inspiration of metaphors and
similes. He was able to observe correspondences visually and experientially through his
ability to be present consciously in the plane of the spiritual world. For instance, when
people there discussed spiritual ideas from revelation, horses appeared. When someone he
conversed with had a hostile vindictive personality, all sorts of dangerous and noxious
animal and vegetative life appeared. When speaking with angels or visiting their plane of
habitation, the surrounds similarly reflected natural things that were exact
correspondences of the spiritual meaning of their lifestyle, affections, and topics of
discussion, reflected in unending detail about the color of walls, the material of
clothes, the art of architecture and jewelry, and so forth. In the 12 volumes of the
Arcana Coelestia and the 8 volumes of the Apocalypse Explained and Revealed, Swedenborg
undertook a verse by verse, and phrase by phrase analysis of three books of the Bible
(Genesis, Exodus, Revelations) in which he enters into the vast details of
correspondences, or the cause-effect analysis of natural phenomena by synchronous influx.

Our civilization has thus received a new consciousness of
ourselves as human beings, including the knowledge that our intimate and most personal
thoughts and feelings are in fact operations of communication and mutual influence between
ourselves and the entire human race across all times and planets. Swedenborg says that in
God all things are as one and that God sees the entire human race as one person. This is
another way of saying that nothing in the universe can exist by itself and that all things
are interconnected (DP 74; 124). Though this wisdom was long known to individuals in many
generations, it is only in Swedenborg that we are finally given the details of how this
operates.

Many issues will be investigated as psychology and society
as a whole begin to assimilate the concept of the vertical community. How can we influence
our vertical associations? If we knew this we could apply the knowledge to our activities
in therapy, instruction, inventiveness, and social activism to bring about new thoughts
and feelings, hence new values and ways of behaving. Swedenborg clearly states that the
purpose of the universe and all its phenomena such as the dual sun, influx, and the
vertical community is a human purpose serving our regeneration, that is, our ability to
raise our immortal mind or spirit into the higher planes of human existence to eternity.

Without these two faculties [liberty and rationality] we
would not have immortality and eternal life. This follows from what has just been said,
that by means of them there is conjunction with the Lord and also reformation and
regeneration: by conjunction we have immortality and by reformation and regeneration we
have eternal life. Since by means of these faculties there is conjunction of the Lord with
every person, with the evil as well as with the good, as has been said, therefore every
individual has immortality. But eternal life, that is, the life of heaven, is given to
that person in whom there is reciprocal conjunction ranging from inmost things to
ultimates. From these considerations may be evident the reasons why the Lord preserves
these two faculties in us unimpaired and as sacred in every step of His Divine Providence.
(DP 96)

The new scientific paradigm needs a workable
methodology in order to proceed and progress. We now have a scientifically revealed method
of research and theory in dualist science. It consists of our following the map available
in the hard-wired built-in structure of correspondential influx across vertical degrees.
We now have available a practical method for investigating empirically cause-effect
relations in the natural world. We have been given the rational principles that constrict
what can happen and what cannot as laid forth in the law of providence and permissions. We
have also been given the principle of correspondences across vertical degrees, how they
operate and functionally interrelate, both in etiology or development, and in synchronous
operation. No one has offered a count of the size of the database of correspondences in
Swedenborg but as a global guess I would say it runs into the millions. There have been
attempts to enumerate and categorize some of the correspondences by Swedenborg in the
indexes at the end of his works, and definitional lists (e.g., Ontology), and
there have been dictionary compilations by Swedenborgian scholars (Potts; Worcester;
Sechrist; L. James).

Noam Chomsky, architect of the
new generative linguistics, is one of the few influential figures in science who have
fought a long intellectual battle against "behaviorism," which has been a
dominant approach in Psychology identified with B. F. Skinner. Chomsky defied the long
tradition of materialism and asserted that humans are born with a mental organ he
called LAD or Language Acquisition Device. Chomsky redefined linguistics as "a branch
of cognitive psychology" and invented an entirely new methodology for linguistics
that was adopted by the entire profession as the new dominant paradigm. Chomsky defines
the mind as a "biological organ" made of sub-organs. His approach thus follows
the rule of "No Function Without Substance." However he had no specific
suggestions regarding the nature of this mental substance. Swedenborg is unique in the
specificity with which he identifies the mental organs, which he calls the
"spirit."

Swedenborg was initiated into this scientific methodology
by the extraordinary love he maintained for the idea known globally to people as "all
things are connected." This idea is held as a primary tenet in both religion/theology
and science. In religion: there is nothing that God does not see, or, there is nothing
beyond or outside God's will and power. In science: determinism rules and there are no
exceptions. "Nothing outside God" and "all things determined" are thus
principles generated by the rational law that all things are connected. However though
this principle is known and accepted, it is not understood and practiced in my generation
of scientists. We have carved out our various disciplines and specializations so that we
are freed in our theory building and in our research, from having to impose on ourselves
the constriction that "all things are connected" (DP 74; 124).

As a psychologist specializing in psycholinguistics, I was allowed by my peers to formulate
mini-theories that did not attempt to take into account the fact that all things are
connected. I could, for instance, obtain research grants and publish in refereed journals,
by looking for methods of analyzing discourse (dialog, self-reports, etc.) without being
required to state how thoughts are generated through feelings. Studying thoughts without
the feelings that correspond to them and produce them (DLW 412) is like studying the lungs
without paying any attention to the heart and the circulation of the blood in the lungs.
Such an account of the lungs would be worse than useless if decisions were to be based on
it. Yet I am allowed to make scientific conclusions about thoughts without considering
their corresponding feelings. And many other scientists have done likewise, in fact, the
vast majority if not the entirety of the field of cognitive science. Only now, at the end
of the 1990s as we meet the millennium, there is a new emergent awareness of how feelings
influence thoughts, as indicated in a new book announcing the birth of the field of
"affective computing" (Picard, 1997).

Swedenborg has given a vivid illustration of the new
dualist methodology in his detailed analysis of how the
affective and the cognitive components of the mind interact and are constrained by
each other. Since the affective and cognitive organs of the mind are not visible to the
microscope, and cannot be scanned or imaged, we can gain specific details on their
functional relations by applying to them what we know about the hart and the lungs. All we
need to know is that the heart corresponds to the affective while the lungs correspond to
the cognitive. Here are some of his many presentations on this methodology:

It is known that heat and light go forth
from the sun, and that all things in the universe are recipients and grow warm and bright
in the degree in which they receive. So do heat and light go forth from the sun where the
Lord is; the heat going forth therefrom is love, and the light wisdom (as shown in Part
Second). Life, therefore, is from these two which go forth from the Lord as a sun. That
love and wisdom from the Lord is life can be seen also from this, that man grows torpid as
love recedes from him, and stupid as wisdom recedes from him, and that were they to recede
altogether he would become extinct.

There are many things pertaining to love which have
received other names because they are derivatives, such as affections, desires, appetites,
and their pleasures and enjoyments; and there are many things pertaining to wisdom, such
as perception, reflection, recollection, thought, intention to an end; and there are many
pertaining to both love and wisdom, such as consent, conclusion, and determination to
action; besides others. All of these, in fact, pertain to both, but they are designated
from the more prominent and nearer of the two. From these two are derived ultimately
sensations, those of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch, with their enjoyments and
pleasures.

It is according to appearance that the eye sees: but it is
the understanding that sees through the eye; consequently seeing is predicated also of the
understanding. The appearance is that the ear hears: but it is the understanding that
hears through the ear; consequently hearing is predicated also of attention and giving
heed, which pertain to the understanding. The appearance is that the nose smells, and the
tongue tastes but it is the understanding that smells and also tastes by virtue of its
perception; therefore smelling and tasting are predicated also of perception. So in other
cases. The sources of all these are love and wisdom; from which it can be seen that these
two make the life of man (DLW 363).

DP 193. I. ALL MAN'S THOUGHTS ARE FROM THE AFFECTIONS OF
HIS LIFE'S LOVE AND THERE ARE NO THOUGHTS WHATEVER, NOR CAN THERE BE, EXCEPT FROM THEM. It
has been shown above in this treatise, and also in the work entitled ANGELIC WISDOM
CONCERNING THE DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, particularly in the First and Fifth Parts, what in
their essence are the life's love and the affections and thoughts thence derived, and what
the sensations and actions from these are which arise in the body. Now since the causes
from which human prudence flows forth as an effect are derived from these, it is necessary
that something concerning these should also be stated here. For things written elsewhere
cannot be so closely connected with those written later as they can if they are repeated
and presented to view together.

[2] Earlier in this treatise, and in the one mentioned
above on THE DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM, it was shown that in the Lord are Divine Love and
Divine Wisdom; that these two are Life itself; that from these two man has will and
understanding, will from the Divine Love and understanding from the Divine Wisdom; that to
these two the heart and the lungs in the body correspond; and that consequently it may be
evident that as the pulsation of the heart together with the respiration of the lungs
governs the whole man as to his body, so the will together with the understanding governs
the whole man as to his mind. Thus, it has been shown, there are two principles of life in
every man, the one natural and the other spiritual, the natural principle of life being
the pulsation of the heart and the spiritual principle the will of the mind. Each of these
joins to itself a consort with which it cohabits and with which it performs the functions
of life, the heart joining to itself the lungs, and the will joining to itself the
understanding.

[3] Now since the soul of the will is love and the soul of
the understanding is wisdom, both being from the Lord, it follows that love is the life of
everyone, and is life of such a quality as is joined to wisdom; or what is the same, that
the will is the life of everyone, and is life of such a quality as is joined to the
understanding. However, more on this subject may be seen above in this treatise, and
especially in THE ANGELIC WISDOM CONCERNING THE DIVINE LOVE AND WISDOM in the First and
Fifth Parts. (DP 193).

Here Swedenborg continues to elaborate on the
principle of correspondences as a methodology for dualist science. He first established
the basic paradigm: the causal flow is always unidirectional from the spiritual to the
natural and never the reverse. When I discussed hearing in my lectures to psychology
students I did not present the idea that "it is the understanding that hears through
the ear," believing instead that hearing is the result of sound entering the brain
through the ears in the form of nerve impulses that correspond to the air waves that
correspond to the vocalizations of a speaker. All this was true, but hardly genuine as I
was not required by the subject matter to discuss how from the brain the neural pattern
became hearing or perceiving and understanding. It was enough that I discuss how the
physical information got to the brain.

At this point I was supposed to cease being a rational
scientist and speak in such irrational but permissible terms as, "My brain told me to
go left" or "Your brain knows that the outcome will be negative," or,
"Your brain is telling you to fall asleep," etc., thus leaving unexplained how
we go conceptually from "I" to the brain or from the brain to knowledge or
understanding other than to think that the brain knows and the brain understands clearly
an illogical idea since it is the "I" that knows and understands. What we need
is to show how the brain and the "I" connect or communicate with each other. We
are more aware of this irrational attitude when we talk about computers. Though we say
"the computer decides which is faster and shows it to you first" and helpful
things of this sort computers do for you, we know in the background through common
understanding, that the computer does not think and decide but performs data operations of
a mechanical sort under the guidance and inner presence of the programmer. Perhaps we tend
to forget this, especially as computers are entering the affective computing phase of
development, nevertheless when we are asked to explain the process with some level of
expertise we will only appeal to the computer as a system operated by some programming
software capable of organizing new incoming data through the digital loops created and
laid down by the intelligence and wisdom of the programmer.

Swedenborg's dualist methodology gives us a new honesty in
science. His ethics of scientific research can be expressed by the phrase: NO FUNCTION
WITHOUT SUBSTANCE (DP 74). If everything is connected from the Divine to the natural event
(the primary premise of dualist science), then there must be a means of determinism
"from firsts to lasts." Nothing disconnected can exist (TCR 679). The
connections are not mere wind, or magic, or divine pronouncement: they are substantial.
Substance is a necessary concept of all science. The space as vacuum idea never had real
life in the modern mind. When I was in college in the 1950s, space exploration research
was just beginning as a reality. There was tremendous interest. Everybody always
emphasized the idea that space was not empty, but filled with particles and fiery
atmospheres, and even that it had a shape called gravitational bend, and so forth. The
modern mind has never accepted a vacuum, and the postmodern mind even less.

Swedenborg traces the series of atmospheres from the
spiritual Sun to human levels of mind to the earthly sun and it derivative minerals and
compounds. Swedenborg identified these atmospheres and their properties by means of
rational problem-solving using the methodology of correspondences arranged in conceptual
series from the most external to the most internal of the human form. An illustration of
his method may be cited here:

Since all things of the mind have
relation to the will and understanding, and all things of the body to the heart and lungs,
there are in the head two brains, distinct from each other as will and understanding are
distinct. The cerebellum is especially the organ of the will, and the cerebrum of the
understanding. Likewise the heart and lungs in the body are distinct from the remaining
parts there. They are separated by the diaphragm, and are enveloped by their own covering,
called the pleura, and form that part of the body called the chest. In the other parts of
the body, called members, organs, and viscera, there is a joining together of the two, and
thus there are pairs; for instance, the arms, hands, loins, feet, eyes, and nostrils; and
within the body the kidneys, ureters, and testicles; and the viscera which are not in
pairs are divided into right and left.

Moreover, the brain itself is divided into two hemispheres,
the heart into two ventricles, and the lungs into two lobes; the right of all these having
relation to the good of truth, and the left to the truth of good, or, what is the same,
the right having relation to the good of love from which is the truth of wisdom, and the
left having relation to the truth of wisdom which is from the good of love. And because
the conjunction of good and truth is reciprocal, and by means of that conjunction the two
become as it were one, therefore the pairs in man act together and conjointly in
functions, motions, and senses" (DLW 384).

Future research will no doubt explore the full
complex of functional correspondences between body anatomy and mental operations. A major
revelation has been given through identifying the affective organs of the mind (feelings,
emotions, motives, impulses, etc.) with specific parts of the brain: right hemisphere in
the cortex and cerebellum; and the cognitive organs of the mind (reasoning, memory,
perception, comprehension, etc.) with the left hemisphere. (See also DLW384). It is
also revealed that the lungs correspond to the cognitive and the heart to the affective. Stephen Cole has traced the history of the cerebellum in psychology
in relation to the concept of the unconscious (see AE 1175:4). It is clear that
current research in neurophysiology and cognitive science confirms Swedenborg's
conclusions about the connection between the cerebellum and the affective domain
(voluntary; will; emotion; sensorimotor coordination; goal-directed behavior). I predict
that future research in these fields will continue to confirm the results of Swedenborg's
methodology of correspondences, especially in its details.

For example, Swedenborg describes how the lungs respire
through blood directly from the heart as well as through blood from outside the heart
(vena cava and aorta). This twofold respiration corresponds to how the cognitive can be
elevated to higher planes of functioning called "celestial." This state is far
above its normal functioning and corresponds to the lungs when respiring through blood not
directly from the heart.

But as love that is of the will acts as
one with the heart by correspondence, and wisdom that is of the understanding acts as one
with the lungs (as has been shown above) therefore what has been said (in n. 404) about
affection for truth, perception of truth, and thought, can nowhere be more clearly seen
and proved than in the lungs and the mechanism thereof. These, therefore, shall be briefly
described.

After birth, the heart discharges the blood from its right
ventricle into the lungs; and after passing through these it is emptied into the left
ventricle: thus the heart opens the lungs. This it does through the pulmonary arteries and
veins. The lungs have bronchial tubes which ramify, and at length end in air-cells, into
which the lungs admit the air, and thus respire. Around the bronchial tubes and their
ramifications there are also arteries and veins called the bronchial, arising from the
vena azygos or vena cava, and from the aorta. These arteries and veins are distinct from
the pulmonary arteries and veins.

From this it is evident that the blood flows into the lungs
by two ways, and flows out from them by two ways. This enables the lungs to respire
non-synchronously with the heart. That the alternate movements of the heart and the
alternate movements of the lungs do not act as one is well known. Now, inasmuch as there
is a correspondence of the heart and lungs with the will and understanding (as shown
above), and inasmuch as conjunction by correspondence is of such a nature that as one acts
so does the other, it can be seen by the flow of the blood out of the heart into the lungs
how the will flows into the understanding, and produces the results mentioned just above
(n. 404) respecting affection for and perception of truth, and respecting thought. By
correspondence this and many other things relating to the subject, which cannot be
explained in a few words, have teen disclosed to me.

Whereas love or the will corresponds to the heart, and
wisdom or the understanding to the lungs, it follows that the blood vessels of the heart
in the lungs correspond to affections for truth, and the ramifications of the bronchia of
the lungs to perceptions and thoughts from those affections. Whoever will trace out all
the tissues of the lungs from these origins, and disclose the analogy with the love of the
will and the wisdom of the understanding, will be able to see in a kind of image the
things mentioned above (n. 404), and thereby attain to a confirmed belief. But since a few
only are familiar with the anatomical details respecting the heart and lungs, and since
confirming a thing by what is unfamiliar induces obscurity, I omit further demonstration
of the analogy. (DLW 405).

By means of this correspondence many arcana relating to the
will and understanding, thus also to love and wisdom, may be disclosed. In the world it is
scarcely known what the will is or what love is, for the reason that man is not able, by
himself, to love, and from love to will, although he is able as it were by himself to
exercise intelligence and thought; just as he is not able of himself to cause the heart to
beat, although he is able of himself to cause the lungs to respire.

Now because it is scarcely known in the world what the will
is or what love is, but it is known what the heart and the lungs are, -- for these are
objects of sight and can be examined, and have been examined and described by anatomists,
while the will and the understanding are not objects of sight, and cannot be so examined--
therefore when it is known that these correspond, and by correspondence act as one, many
arcana relating to the will and understanding may be disclosed that could not otherwise be
disclosed; those for instance relating to the conjunction of the will with the
understanding, and the reciprocal conjunction of the understanding with the will; those
relating to the conjunction of love with wisdom, and the reciprocal conjunction of wisdom
with love; also those relating to the derivation of love into affections, and to the
consociation of affections, to their influx into perceptions and thoughts, and finally
their influx according to correspondence into the bodily acts and senses. These and many
other arcana may be both disclosed and illustrated by the conjunction of the heart and
lungs, and by the influx of the blood from the heart into the lungs, and reciprocally from
the lungs into the heart, and therefrom through the arteries into all the members, organs
and viscera of the body (DLW 385).

In other numbers Swedenborg goes into detail for
each of these propositions. For example, in number 390 and 391, he describes his
experiments with angels in which they gradually withdraw and restore the respiration of
his lungs so he may observe directly the sequence of events through which the dying go
through. It is thus that in number 392 Swedenborg announces his discovery of the cardiac
and pulmonic movements of the brain individually, and of societies generally as the two
universal movements imposed by everything from the action within their inmost of the
spiritual Sun from which they all have their origin. In number 397 Swedenborg reveals the
existence of "the divided mind," that is, our ability to separate the affective
and the cognitive states so that they no longer fully correspond to each other, a state
that disturbs their functioning and ultimately leads to total degradation and spiritual
insanity, which lead to a life of fantasy and delusion and irrationality in a frame of
mind called hell or infernal.

Love or the will prepares all things in
its own human form, that it may act conjointly with wisdom or the understanding. We say,
will and understanding, but it is to be carefully borne in mind that the will is the
entire man; for it is the will that, with the understanding, is in first principles in the
brains, and in derivatives in the body, consequently in the whole and in every part (see
above, n. 365-367). From this it can be seen that the will is the entire man as regards
his very form, both the general form and the particular form of all parts; and that the
understanding is its partner, as the lungs are the partner of the heart. Beware of
cherishing an idea of the will as something separate from the human form, for it is that
same form.

From this it can be seen not only how the will prepares a
bridal chamber for the understanding, but also how it prepares all things in its house
(which is the whole body) that it may act conjointly with the understanding. This it
prepares in such a way that as each and every thing of the body is conjoined to the will,
so is it conjoined to the understanding; in other words, that as each and everything of
the body is submissive to the will, so is it submissive to the understanding. How each and
every thing of the body is prepared for conjunction with the understanding as well as with
the will, can be seen in the body only as in a mirror or image, by the aid of anatomical
knowledge, which shows how all things in the body are so connected, that when the lungs
respire each and every thing in the entire body is moved by the respiration of the lungs,
and at the same time from the beating of the heart.

Anatomy shows that the heart is joined to the lungs through
the auricles, which are continued into the interiors of the lungs; also that all the
viscera of the entire body are joined through ligaments to the chamber of the breast; and
so joined that when the lungs respire, each and all things, in general and in particular,
partake of the respiratory motion. Thus when the lungs are inflated, the ribs expand the
thorax, the pleura is dilated, and the diaphragm is stretched wide, and with these all the
lower parts of the body, which are connected with them by ligaments therefrom, receive
some action through the pulmonic action; not to mention further facts, lest those who have
no knowledge of anatomy, on account of their ignorance of its terms should be confused in
regard to the subject. Consult any skillful and discerning anatomist whether all things in
the entire body, from the breast down be not so bound together, that when the lungs expand
by respiration, each and all of them are moved to action synchronous with the pulmonic
action.

From all this the nature of the conjunction prepared by the
will between the understanding and each and every thing of the human form is now evident.
Only explore the connections well and scan them with an anatomical eye; then, following
the connections, consider their cooperation with the breathing lungs and with the heart;
and finally, in thought, substitute for the lungs the understanding, and for the heart the
will, and you will see. (DLW, 403).

In number 379 Swedenborg reveals that every
individual receives influx that gives the cognitive organ the ability to perceive common
sense by insight and is called "thinking from common perception." This ability
allows every normally functioning individual from any society or educational level to
perceive and comprehend spiritual truths, that is, to be wise. Synchronously with the
influx of common perception from within, there is a corresponding "efflux" from
the senses to the brains and their tiny cortical cells, each of which is like a brain unto
itself, hence, made up of billions of sub-structures! At the edge between the finest
substances of nature in the cortical minibrain cell the first contact of correspondence
between the spiritual and the natural takes place. The influx of common perception from
the spiritual brain encounters the efflux of sensory modulation stemming from seeing
something or hearing an utterance. The rationality coming from the common perception
through spiritual influx is thus synchronous to the physicality efflux associated with the
sensory stimulus, giving rise to the consciousness of meaning and coherence.

This is the crowning premise of scientific
dualism and, in my opinion, represents the deepest level of scientific revelation. Since
deepest means highest in the Swedenborgian paradigm, the crowning affirmation from which
all other affirmations come from is that only the human form exists. This is an
astonishing revelation and makes the most ardent humanist appear mild in comparison. Just
think: rocks, geometric shapes, stars, and atoms--all are in the human form.

All phenomena are human because the law of providence and
permissions restricts a phenomenon's existence to its ability to serve a human end or
purpose. Any substance, form, or function that does not have a human purpose, does not
exist. Further, the purpose or end is synchronously present in its cause, and through that
in its effects, in accordance with the law of vertical degrees. Therefore every object and
property in the natural universe must have a human purpose and must have its interior
structure in the human form (AC 3624-3649; SD 4775).

It is on this account that the cosmos has the shape of the
human body, as witnessed by Swedenborg, and that a human being is a micro-cosmos, as
spoken of by the ancients. The extent to which this is true in detail was not known until
Swedenborg's revelations. For more than two decades Swedenborg chronicled in his diary the
daily excursions he experienced into the spiritual realm, the manner of his
"travels" through those realms, and what he witnessed there. He gives a full
account of his spiritual journeyings in his 12-volume Arcana Coelestia and in his 6-volume
Spiritual Diary. He fully confirms that not only are the spiritual land masses and regions
in the human external shape, but also in the internal organs of the body. In fact,
Swedenborg used his expert knowledge of anatomy and physiology (as in EAK, all 3 volumes)
to localize himself within the Grand Human, or spiritual land masses and oceans. He would
refer to his location as "in the province of the eye" or "in the province
of the nose" and so on. About the latter, Swedenborg says:

Those however who relate to the
interiors of the nostrils are in a more perfect state of Perception than those (just
treated of) who relate to their exteriors. (...) [2] Finally I observed a bright white
light, and was told that here were the abodes of those women who constitute the province
of the internal nostrils (for they were of the female sex); and that the clear-sightedness
of perception of those who are there, is represented in the world of spirits by such
apertures. For the Spiritual things in heaven are represented in the world of Spirits by
natural things, or rather by Such things as are sirs to those which are nature It was
afterwards given me to speak with them, and they said that through these representative
apertures they can see with exactness what is being done below, and that the apertures
appear turned to those societies which they are occupied in observing. And as they were
then turned to me, they said that they could observe all the ideas of my thought, and also
those of the people around me. They said moreover that they did not merely observe the
ideas, but also saw them represented in many ways, as for instance those of the affection
of good by correspondent little flames, and those of the affection of truth by variations
of light. They added that they saw certain angelic societies with me, and their thoughts
represented by objects of many colors, by crimson dyes such as we see on painted curtains,
and also by the colors of the rainbow on a darker ground, and they said that they thus
perceived those angelic societies to be of the province of the eye.

[3] Afterwards other spirits were seen who were cast down
from thence and scattered about hither and thither, of whom they said that they were such
as had insinuated themselves among them for the purpose of observing something, and of
seeing what was going on below, but with an insidious purpose. This casting down was
observed whenever angelic choirs approached and entered into conversation with me. As
regards those who were cast down, they said that they relate to the mucus of the nostrils,
and that they are dull and stupid, and also devoid of conscience, thus altogether devoid
of interior perception. The woman who was seen (as mentioned above) signified such female
ensnares. With these also it was given me to speak, and they expressed their surprise at
any one's having conscience, being quite ignorant of what conscience is; and when I said
that it is an interior perception of what is good and true, and that to act contrary to it
causes anxiety, this they did not understand. Such are those who correspond to the mucus
which infests the nostrils and is therefore ejected.

[4] There was afterwards shown me the kind of light in
which those live who relate to the interiors of the nostrils. It was a light beautifully
varied with veins of golden flame and silver light, the affections of good being
represented therein by the veins of golden flame, and the affections of truth by the veins
of Silver light. I was also shown that they have apertures opening at the side, through
which they see as it were a sky with stars in the blue, and I was told that in their
chambers there is a light so great as to immeasurably surpass the noonday light of this
world. I was further told that the heat there is like that of early Summer on earth, and
also that these angels of the female sex are accompanied by little children of some years
who are unwilling to Stay when the female ensnares (or mucuses) arrive. Numberless such
representatives appear in the world of spirits; but these were representative of the
perceptions in which are those female angels who correspond to the sense of smell in the
interiors of the nostrils (AC 4627).

About the relation between anxiety and the stomach,
Swedenborg notes this:

As solicitude about things to come is
what produces anxieties in man, and as such spirits appear in the region of the stomach,
therefore anxieties affect the stomach more than the other viscera. It has also been given
me to perceive how these anxieties are increased and diminished by the presence and
removal of the spirits referred to. Some anxieties were perceived interiorly, some more
exteriorly, some more above, and some more below, according to the difference of such
solicitude as to origin, derivation, and direction. It is for this reason also that when
such anxieties take possession of the mind, the region about the stomach is constricted,
and at times pain is felt there, and the anxieties also seem to rise up from there; and
hence also it is that when man is no longer solicitous about the future, or when
everything turns out well for him so that he no longer is fearful of any misfortune, the
region about the stomach is relieved and expands, and he feels delight" (AC 5178).

A new scientific revelation that is of deep
significance to the medical sciences is that physiological processes are dependent on the
corresponding synchronous action of spiritual societies in the Grand Human regions. In the
number just quoted there is the revelation that stomach ulcers are processes dependent on
the activity of spirits that dwell in the region of the stomach in the Grand Human regions
of the spiritual world. Further, it is revealed that activity by spirits in the stomach
region of the Grand Human are felt through the mediation of anxieties in physiological
processes in our stomach. There is thus a correspondence between mental quality of a
society in the Grand Human, their anatomical location there, and the plane of our mind and
region of our body. Christen Blom-Dahl (1996) has
collected many examples from Swedenborg's writings where a connection is indicated between
anatomical location or function on the one hand, and the mental quality of spiritual
societies in the corresponding organ in the Grand Human. Blom-Dahl has extracted several
instances in which the mental quality of spirits is described in terms that have been
independently used by medical researchers in the identification and description of viruses
that are organ or action specific. According to Blom-Dahl
many more such revelations lie hidden in the writings to be discovered by future
generations.

Worcester (1931) has compiled many facts regarding
spiritual-physiological correspondences found in Swedenborg. Spirits who live in the bile
region are those who have despised spiritual and heavenly things (p. 105) and those who
are in the region of the liver produce in us a desire and capacity to assimilate knowledge
(p.105). Those who live in the region of the kidneys and bladder, according to Swedenborg:

They who constitute the province of the
kidneys, ureters, and bladder in the Grand Human, are of such a disposition that they
desire nothing more than to explore and to search out the quality of others; and there are
some of them who are eager to chastise and to punish, provided there is some justice in
the case. The functions of the kidneys, ureters, and bladder are of this kind; for they
explore the blood thrown into them to see whether there is any useless and hurtful serum
in it, which they separate from what is useful, and then correct it; for they drive it
down toward lower positions, and on the way and afterward they agitate it in various ways.
These are the functions of those who constitute the province of the parts in question. But
the spirits and societies of spirits to which the urine itself, especially fetid urine,
corresponds, are infernal; for as soon as the urine is separated from the blood, although
it is in the little tubes of the kidneys or within the bladder, still it is out of the
body; for what has been separated no longer circulates in the body, and therefore does not
contribute anything to the coming into existence and subsistence of its parts" (AC 5381).

Besides my published
work on Swedenborg, there is a growing body of scientific work by a few other
scientists who have overcome the academic culture of resistance in their field by stepping
into the new pool an making use of dualist concepts. Among those who have published their
views in recent years I can mention a few I'm familiar with see
References below:

Others will be found in the pages of New Philosophy,
as well as publications by the Swedenborg Foundation and New Church organizations and
institutes around the world. An especially noteworthy publication is the volume published
in 1988 to mark the tricentennial of the birth of Swedenborg. Published by The Academy of
the New Church in Bryn Athyn, PA, it was edited by Erland Brock with the assistance of
Bruce Glenn, Carroll Odhner, J. Durban Odhner, Cynthia Walker, and Jane Williams-Hogan.

Here is a table showing some of the
dualist concepts for psychology and biology that I extracted from Arcana Coelestia(AC) and Divine Providence (DP). Similar extractions are possible from Swedenborg's
other works (see for example James and Nahl, 1982).

This listing represents a conceptual
identification I was able to make between dualist science in Swedenborg and contemporary
concepts in psychology and social science. In the future, I intend to develop the
theoretical rationales that justify these identifications so that it may be confirmed by
consensus.

Swedenborg uses the expression "it is not
known that" hundreds of times in the 12-volume Arcana Coelestia and the
16 works following it (1747-1771). Other expressions indicating a similar meaning include:

it is not yet known that...

be it known that...

that this is the case is an arcanum not known in the world.

it has hitherto remained unknown that...

that will now be revealed for the first time.

that has not entered the mind of anyone until now.

no one can know that...

...yet the contrary is true.

If we were to add them all and analyze their content, it
would give us a database of thousands of items of knowledge for future research and
development in dualist science. Swedenborg marks these places explicitly to show where the
gap exists between material and dualist science. I took a sample of these which will be found here. A preliminary analysis of a sub-sample
of 17 passages (or one-third of the original sample), pinpoints the following dualist
concepts that are "not known" in materialist science:

1. Water corresponds to truth

AE 71. As it is not yet known that "waters" in
the Word signify the truths of faith and the knowledges of truth,

2. Natural life by itself is a state of sleep

AE 187. Spiritual life is to moral life, apart from
spiritual life, as wakefulness is to sleep, or as noonday light is to the evening, yea, to
darkness. But that this is so is not known or perceived by those who are in natural life
alone.

3. Faith separate from charity does not save

AE 236. those who are in the doctrine of faith alone and
justification by faith are such, or believe themselves to be so, is not known to those who
are not in that faith, although they are among them; but that still they are so it has
been given me to know by much experience.

4. Rock corresponds to God and to faith or truth

AE 411. It is known in the church that this
"rock" signified the Lord; but it is not known that it had this signification
because "rock" in the Word signifies the Divine truth that proceeds from the
Lord; this was why Moses and Aaron were commanded to speak to it.

5. Good has primacy over truth

AE 434. Because good has no quality until it is formed into
truths, and without quality nothing is perceived, so it is not known that good is first,
and is the first born; for it is good that is first conceived from the Lord with man, and
it is brought forth through truths, in which good is in its own form and effigy.

6. Existence of the law of permissions

AE 638. For it is not known that to avert the evil of
punishment would he contrary to order, for if it were averted evil would increase until
there would be no good remaining.

7. We are dual citizens: body in physical world, mind in
spiritual world

AC 1889. The reason why this subject is not of easy
explication, is that at this day it is not known what the internal man is, what the
interior, and what the exterior. When the rational is spoken of, or the rational man, some
idea can be formed of it; but when it is said that the rational is the intermediate
between the internal and the external, few if any comprehend it.

8. Charity determines the faith one has

AC 2435. The cause of there being such a controversy was
that it was not known, as even at this day it is not known, that a man has only so much of
faith as he has of charity; and that when a man is being regenerated, charity presents
itself to faith, or what is the same, good presents itself to truth, and insinuates itself
into it and adapts itself to it in every particular, causing faith to be faith.

9. Existence of vertical community--we are never alone

AC 4062. Yet as it is not known, at least is not
acknowledged at heart, that there are spirits and angels around man, and that his internal
man is in the midst of them, and is thus ruled by the Lord, it is little believed,
although said.

10. Spiritual growth depends on living according to God's
precepts one knows

DLW 248. It is not known that a natural man becomes
spiritual by the opening of some higher degree in him, and that such opening is effected
by a spiritual life, which is a life conformed to the Divine precepts; and that without a
life conformed to these man remains natural.

11. In what way a person is a microcosmos

DLW 319. By the ancients man was called a microcosm, from
his representing the macrocosm, that is, the universe in its whole complex; but it is not
known at the present day why man was so called by the ancients, for no more of the
universe or macrocosm is manifest in him than that he derives nourishment and bodily life
from its animal and vegetable kingdoms, and that he is kept in a living condition by its
heat, sees by its light, and hears and breathes by its atmospheres. Yet these things do
not make man a microcosm, as the universe with all things thereof is a macrocosm. The
ancients called man a microcosm, or little universe, from truth which they derived from
the knowledge of correspondences, in which the most ancient people were, and from their
communication with angels of heaven; for angels of heaven know from the things which they
see about them that all things of the universe, viewed as to uses, represent man as an
image.

12. Will and understanding are distinct

DLW 361. That every man has these two, will and
understanding, and that they are distinct from each other, as love and wisdom are
distinct, is known and is not known in the world. It is known from common perception, but
it is not known from thought and still less from thought when written out; for who does
not know from common perception that the will and the understanding are two distinct
things in man?

Additionally, "If you take away willing from
understanding you understand nothing" (DP 96)

13. Love does nothing without wisdom

DP 4. Love apart from union with wisdom cannot do anything
(n. 401-403). Love does nothing unless in conjunction with wisdom (n. 409, 410). Spiritual
heat and spiritual light, in proceeding from the Lord as a Sun, form one, as the Divine
Love and the Divine Wisdom in the Lord are one (n. 99-102). The truth of this proposition
is evident from what has been shown in these passages; but as it is not known how two
things distinct from one another can act as one, I will here show.

14. What heaven is

DP 27. Since, however, it is not known what heaven is in
general, that [3] is, in a community of persons, and what it is in particular, that is, in
the individual; and what heaven is in the spiritual world and what it is in the natural
world; and yet it is important to know this, because heaven is the end of the Divine
Providence, I will present this subject with some clearness in the following order.

15. How Divine Providence operates

DP 70. It is well known that there is a Divine Providence,
but it is not known what its nature is. This is not known because the laws of the Divine
Providence are interior truths, hitherto concealed within the wisdom of the angels; but
they are now to be revealed in order that what belongs to the Lord may be ascribed to Him,
and what does not belong to man may not be ascribed to any man.

16. Natural mind sees nothing of the spiritual

DP 205. It is not known that all who lead an evil life
interiorly acknowledge nature and human prudence alone, because of this general covering
by which it is hidden from view.

17. Evils come in bundles

DP 296. It is not known that in every evil there are
innumerable things, exceeding in number the fibers and vessels in a man's body. For a
wicked man is a hell in its least form; and hell consists of myriads of myriads of
spirits, and every one there is in form like a man, although a monstrous one, in which all
the fibers and vessels are inverted.

Dualist science already exists in a universal
form in the Writings of Swedenborg. For the paradigm reversal to take place in actuality
and historically, each academic and research discipline needs to prepare the intellectual
climate by mining the Writings and extracting from them the method and theory that is
viable for that discipline. The initial phase must be taxonomic in which the concepts are
built up and defined within the context of that discipline. Once there exists a viable
conglomerate of dualist concepts defined within a dualist taxonomy, we can proceed to
phase two, which consists of hypothesis testing and theory building through it. In this
way dualist science can mature and begin to succeed in applications and uses.

My taxonomic efforts in constructing dualist concepts for
psychology can be examined elsewhere (consult James references below).
The table above is such an example, as well as the listing and
categorizing of the passages marked as "this is not known" as
discussed above. An additional method of building the taxonomy of concepts needed for
dualist science consists in making lists that identify dualist concepts given in the
Writings that are puzzling to our normal scientific reasoning, and thus, represent
bridging areas for crossing from monism to dualism. These concepts need to be justified
and discussed for the sake of arriving at a consensus, and I hope this might be such a
stimulus. The following concepts appear in many places throughout the Writings (to be
referenced exactly in the future), but especially in Divine Love and Wisdom (DLW) and Divine Providence (DP).

1. The infinite is within the finite, not the other
way around.

2. The simpler substances are more perfect (have more
qualities and uses) than the compound, not the other way around.

3. The form of the whole, or largest, is fully contained
within the smallest, and throughout, a principle called

Synechdoche

4. Perfection or complexity of structure increases as we
observe and describe smaller and smaller objects.

6. We have no power of our own but enjoy continuous
influx of it, moment by moment. (Also: We are most free--in feeling and in actuality--when
we acknowledge and believe this proposition.)

7. We are born with the natural mind intact and the
spiritual mind yet to be opened through spiritual growth and effort. Until this
opening we are not human but animal. If unopened before death, we remain natural forever,
which is the life of insanity in hell.

8. It is not religious identification or faith that causes
the opening of the spiritual mind, but our daily efforts at thinking and willing in
accordance with religious and moral precepts of life known to us (character
formation). Further: we must have a love for understanding truths of faith in order to
become aware of their existence and use.

9. True faith is not blind but rational or scientific
(dualist; Nunc licet--see TCR 508). Blind faith, or faith by persuasion, is external and
does not have anything spiritual within it.

10. The parental-filial relationship is from charity,
not blood, and does not survive in the spiritual state.

11. God is the one infinite in whom all things are
distinctly one. The infinite is thus single and can create all things from its own
substance by compounding this perfect substance and rendering it less an less perfect as
it approaches the natural mineral and gravitational state. Yet the infinite remains within
the finite thus created (cf. propositions 1 to 4 above)

12. God, or the One Infinite, is present in all things and
in all space and time through vertical degrees and governs all things through
functional interactions called laws of correspondences. Thus, every thing that exists is
distinct and unique, and has a threefold structure--its external matter or energy that
serve some potential use to humans, its interior quality or spirit (wisdom) that holds it
in existence, and its inmost quality or conatus that is from the substance of love (heat
of the spiritual Sun). Every phase of successive development (etiology) is fully present
synchronously in the form of vertical degrees of causation or determination.

13. The science of correspondences is a database of
scientific revelations contained in the Writings. Through a tabulation of the entire
series of correspondences given in the literal Latin text of the Writings we are given a
scientific methodology for discovering the laws of Divine management, that is, the laws of
nature and spirit. Scientific theory based on the science of correspondences will afford
us greater control over natural and psychological phenomena such as food production,
education, and mental health.

14. Every object and process in the natural universe has the
human form, including people, animals, atoms, and galaxies. This is because of the
existence of vertical degrees (see proposition 12 above).

15. Since regeneration, or the opening of the spiritual
plane of the mind depends on character reformation (see proposition 7 above), we have a divided
mind. Our cognitive functioning (i.e., thinking and reasoning) is capable of being
elevated to spiritual light or perception (i.e., to understand spiritual things), while at
the same time, our affective remains at the natural level of functioning. When we strive
to love and live by these spiritual truths, then we bring the affective in alignment with
the cognitive, and thus we are no longer a divided mind (i.e., we are being regenerated).
Those who pass on into the afterlife with a divided mind will have their cognitive lowered
to their affective, thus restoring unity to the person.

17. In the afterlife, people in hell freely choose to
remain there; they are not kept there for punishment. Should they visit heaven, they fall
into internal tortures and swoonings. Thus, those in hell are spiritually adapted to live
in one delusion or another, in total insanity. The varieties of insanity in the hellish
societies are as numerous as the varieties of wisdoms in the heavenly societies, the two
sets being related to each other by specific opposition. Whether we are insane in hell or
wise in heaven depends on the character we built for ourselves while in the physical
body--hence the vast importance of daily life in accordance with good and truth, which is
possible only if we shun one's evils as spiritually injurious, a matter of heaven or hell.
Thus, we need to live daily life by calculating every choice we make in terms of our
character building either for heaven or for hell. This kind of calculation alone makes the
spiritual life.

18. Evil is inherited in our personality traits and
remain with us unless we put them aside through temptations. These are spiritual battles
specifically designed for each individual through life's circumstances such as good luck,
bad luck, accidental events, unexplained success, inherent characteristics, favorable
opportunities, chance associations, fate, the inevitable, and so on. Having a temptation
means fighting for the good and the true in the face of doubts and inherited lusts that
try to destroy the spiritual or moral good and true in us, that is, our conscience.
Overcoming in temptation is a victory whose consequence is opening of the spiritual
functioning held shut by the presence in our mind of the doubts and inherited lusts. By
thousands of such individual victories and openings, our spiritual life is born and grows
in preparation for heavenly life.

19. The negative bias in science is a result of the
purely natural thinking of the individual whose spiritual mind has not yet been opened. In
contrast, dualist science sees the relation between the natural and the spiritual. From
this superior perspective, or reasoning process, one can see the irrational concepts, or
falsities, of the merely natural or monist science. The following concepts from
materialist or monist science are marked as irrational by the Writings (the
reason for their falsity is given in parentheses following each):

a. that vacuum is the fabric of space (false since vacuum is
nothing and nothing cannot be the basis of any thing).

b. that space and time are infinite (false since anything
that has a beginning cannot be infinite; also: there can be only one infinite).

c. that the universe has continuous physical degrees only
(false since in fact the physical is the outermost of the three vertical degrees)

d. that function can exist without its own substance, e.g.,
that the brain gives rise to the mind or, that mental phenomena are emergent
pseudo-phenomena arising from the brain (false since the mind, or thoughts and feelings,
are constituted of spiritual substances and would be nothing without these)

e. that the evolution of the galaxies and of living species
is blind, that is, is shaped by forces unrelated to human love and wisdom (false since all
phenomena at the natural level have a prior spiritual cause, and this is from influx from
the spiritual Sun which is love and wisdom in substance)

f. the cognitive domain in human behavior is primary, the
affective is secondary, e.g., we think something, then we feel a reaction (false since we
could not think anything without first feeling something--thus, the cognitive is the
outside form of the affective that rules it from within)

g. that admittance to heaven depends on Divine forgiveness
from faith alone or predestination from Divine

perk (false since heaven is not a place but a state of mind and this depends
on the individual's cumulative life, not lack of Divine forgiveness)

In evaluating Swedenborg two verdicts stand out, depending
on whether or not you allow the concept of scientific revelation. Those who do not allow
the possibility of Divine revelation of facts about reality, have no logical choice but to
conclude that Swedenborg was deranged and delusional. This conclusion is forced on their
mind because of Swedenborg's repeated and relentless claims that appear somewhat similar
to those of delusional minds: namely, that they talk to spirits generally, that they
converse with people from the past like the Apostles, or the Prophets, or men of history
like Aristotle, Newton, Napoleon or some other king or general, and so forth. Swedenborg
has maintained these claims about himself not just once but described in detail his daily
encounters with people who had lived on this planet and on many other planets and star
systems. Finally, this one: that he spoke with Jesus or God Himself, face to face. Given
these claims there is no other logical choice than to judge him insane-- unless you accept
the possibility of Divine revelation about science.

Those who do, only need to carefully examine Swedenborg's
writings to determine whether this could be it! Many have since his passing on in 1771.
Here, it was my turn as a contemporary scientist operating around the year 2000, to give
an account of how I can modify the materialistic or monistic science I practice
professionally, so as to align it with the scientific revelations in Swedenborg. This new
paradigm is what I call "dualist science" and is based on "substantive
dualism." Swedenborg has provided theory, methodology, and data for the new paradigm.
There are no technical or theoretical barriers left to inhibit the progress of dualism in
science.

Those who are in the New Church celebrate the advent of
"rational faith" in the Writings of Swedenborg. To them the well known
expression "Nunc licet" means the end of blind faith and persuasive faith which
prevent the opening of one's rational and spiritual life:

[4] Since then, the dogmas of the
present Christian churches have not been formed from the Word, but from self-intelligence,
and therefore from falsities, and also have been confirmed by certain passages from the
Word; by the Lord's Divine Providence the Word among the Roman Catholics has been taken
from the laity, and among Protestants has been opened, and yet has been closed by their
common declaration that the understanding must be held in obedience to their faith.

[5] But in the New Church the contrary is the case; there
it is permitted to enter with the understanding and penetrate into all her secrets, and to
confirm them by the Word, because her doctrines are continuous truths laid open by the
Lord by means of the Word, and confirmations of these truths by rational means cause the
understanding to be opened above more and more, and thus to be raised into the light in
which the angels of heaven are. That light in its essence is truth, and in that light
acknowledgment of the Lord as the God of heaven and earth shines in its glory. This is
what is meant by the inscription Nunc Licet over the door of the temple, and also by the
veil of the sanctuary before the cherub being raised. For it is a canon of the New Church,
that falsities close the understanding, and that truths open it. (TCR 508)

To me, it also means the birth of dualist science.
What is rational faith but a rational understanding of reality, of creation, of the laws
of Divine management and governance of every single phenomenon. The laws by which we are
regenerated and grow to be spiritual beings are fixed, describable, and applicable to
individual and society in all daily endeavors.

The Writings of Swedenborg are not only the Word of the
Second Advent for the New Christian Church; they are also the database of scientific
revelations that gives life and direction to the new dualist science--its theory and
methodology for the third millennium.

Williams-Hogan, Jane K. (1998). The Role of Written Text
in the Founding of the Swedenborgian Church.Logos: Newsletter of the Swedenborg Foundation.
Winter Issue. Worcester, John. (1889). Physiological Correspondences. Boston:
Massachusetts New Church Union. (Reprinted in 1976 by the Swedenborg Scientific
Association, Bryn Athyn, PA).